With more than two million page views and more than 4,500 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

What would you have expected to happen once the taxpayers funded
scientist and PhD's associated with Big Pharma to do???? Build fancy
administration buildings, laboratories, and sit around all day and
discuss there. How many of these individuals who helped spend approx..
$2.4 Billion of taxpayers funds actually had patients in their care?
Look at all the recent articles where scientist falsified data or their
findings could not be replicated by others....physicians who actually
care for patients have made greater strides in the field of regenerative
medicine than CIRM could make in 30 years. CIRM will be another
boondoggle where no one is held responsible for the waste of taxpayer
funds. Gov't, Scientist, and PhD's should should move aside and allow
actual doctors to care for their patients with the clinical advancements
that have already been made in the field of regenerative medicine.

It is very disappointing that CIRM selected Randy Miller who backed
obsolete mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), not someone with human embryonic
stem cell (hESC) experience to back voter-approved Prop71. Randy Miller,
together with CIRM vice president Ellen Feigal, are responsible for
several multi-million CIRM disease team awards to MSC at UC Davis that
have no commercial validation at all, and many anti-hESC and anti-Prop71
conflict of interest comments in CIRM undisclosed grant reviews. The
only way for CIRM to revive and bring cures to patients is to publicly
support Prop71 by giving out hESC research awards, do the right thing
that CA voters and patients have waited for so long. If CIRM cannot even
issue a RFA for hESC research, if CIRM cannot have a transparent grant
review process to fund hESC research according to Prop71, if CIRM
continues to take its anti-hESC position, as where all the money of CIRM
awards so far have pointed to, it is hard to imagine anything is going
to change except let a well-wished proposition down the drain.
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About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.